Okay, deep breath in, then out. I’ve got this, I think to myself, close my eyes, and let the bowstring go. The arrow thunks satisfyingly in the distance, and I open my eyes to find it slammed straight into the ground at the base of a tree almost twenty feet from the doe I was aiming for. The animal glances up to stare at the poor shot for just an instant before returning to grazing.
Hen chuckles lightly, then takes the bow from my hands, his fingers brushing warm against mine for the briefest of moments before he draws an arrow notches, pulls, and fires it all in one fluid motion. The missile strikes true, and the doe’s head snaps to the side, fletchings sprouting from its eye, then falls with a hearty thud, legs twitching.
I stare in awe at the man's skill, and Hen gives me a cat’s grin. “It's your turn,” he says, and I remember myself and groan but move towards the kill, hand going to the knife in my belt. I steal a quick glance in his direction before I bend to my work.
It’s been three weeks since Hen decided to teach me to survive in this world. His lessons mainly encompass hunting, butchering, herb gathering, history, for some reason, and the basics of alchemy, though that last one only came after my desperate pleading for a hormone replacement.
Today, as you no doubt can tell, is all about hunting, butchering, curing meat, and tanning hides. I slide my knife into the beast’s corpse and begin parting hide from flesh, and roughly thirty minutes later, I have the whole animal broken down and warped up, ready to transport back home.
“You’re getting better at this,” Hen says approvingly, looking over my work.
“I need a bath,” I say, grimacing at the blood and gristle clinging to my hands as I clean and sheathe my knife. “Preferably with soap.”
“Fresh out of that, I’m afraid,” Hen grunts as he hefts the bundle of skin and meat onto his shoulder. “Might be some time before I can get more.”
I frown. “Why don’t we just make some?” I ask.
Hen’s brow furrows. “Isn’t that a complicated process?”
“Not really,” I say with a shrug. “My family and I used to make it all the time. We just need some rendered fat and lye, which I can make with water and wood ash, and maybe I might mix some lavender in too.”
“Sounds like you’ll be practicing alchemy today as well.” Hen gives me a wry grin, and I smile back.
Out of everything he’d been teaching me, alchemy, to my surprise and delight, the alchemy lessons are likely my favorite. Honestly, it's likely a tie between that and the history lessons, but it's hard to say. A big part of it was making my own hormones, of course, which was the reason he’d begun to teach me in the first place. Turns out there are a lot of plants that can be broken down and used for that in this world.
We spend the walk back chatting as we’ve often done the last three weeks. Mostly about the things Hen’s teaching me or what little I’m willing to share about the life I lead back on earth, but it's all pleasant.
Back at the cottage I’d come to call home, I pull down a makeshift array of pots, pans, a cauldron, and some glass tubes and vials. Using a strainer, I pour water over some wood ash a few times to make a lye solution and begin my soap with some fat we’d rendered the other day and a bottle of lavender oil I’d made a week ago just because it smelled nice.
The whole process is as simple as melting the fat and mixing it in the cooled lye solution and lavender oil, stirring until your whole upper body hurts, and, eventually, the solution will begin to look a lot like high-gloss butter. After that, just take it off the heat and shape it however you like. (I don’t recommend trying this at home as lye can be a dangerous chemical if handled improperly)
It takes longer than I’d like, about an hour or two, but by the end, I’m met with a familiar message in my still enigmatic system log.
***
=System Log=
* You crafted one [Uncommon] bar of soap
* You received [10] experience
* Congratulations! You have achieved enough experience to unlock a class!
You have unlocked the class [Alchemist]
* Would you like to accept this class?
***
Excited by the message but unwilling to accept without outside input, I leave my work and search for Hen. I find him stretching out the hide from the deer in a thick wooden frame.
“What exactly is a class?” I ask bluntly, watching him work. He looks up, sweet beading at his brow, a slight frown on his face as his surprisingly wide shoulders relax.
“You’ve already unlocked one?” The frown looks more like something born of surprise rather than concern, but a moment later, it vanishes, replaced by a broad, proud grin. “That’s my girl. Which one was it?”
I tell him without hesitation, overflowing with building excitement. “Alchemist,” I say, finding myself smiling back without thinking. “Is that a good one? Or should I wait for something else?”
“Considering your situation, it might be the best for you. Besides, it's a good first step on the long journey of advancement. Alchemists are rare among humans, so you’ll find yourself and your skill almost always in demand wherever you go in the five kingdoms. I’d say you should accept it, but that's up to you in the end.”
I glance at the prompt in my vision for a moment, biting my lip, then, without giving myself the chance to second guess myself, I accept. Im suddenly consumed in a pale white light and another message appears in my vision.
***
=System Log=
* You obtain the class [Alchemist]
* You have [3] skill points and [3] ability points
* Please choose from the following skills:
* Alchemist’s spark
* Grants the alchemist access to the primitive fire magics.
* Costs 5 points of mana to cast a continual flame.
* Has no cooldown.
* Unerring Toss
* Grants a temporary increase in accuracy when throwing.
* Costs 15 points of stamina.
* Has a 5-minute cooldown.
* Stalker’s Shroud
* Decreases the chance of being spotted when hiding.
* Increased bonus in shadows or dark.
* Costs 1 point of stamina per second.
* Alchemist’s Grace
* Increases the chance that the next alchemical item will be of higher quality.
* Has a 30-minute cooldown.
* Costs 50 points of mana to activate.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
* Alchemical Rites
* Grants the alchemist access to ritual magic formed through magic to improve alchemical concoctions.
* Cost depends on the rite performed.
* Cooldown depends on the rite performed.
* Please choose from the following abilities:
* Potion Crafting
* Grants the alchemist the ability to craft potions and tinctures with only a cauldron, mana, and a flame.
* Mana Manipulation
* Grants the ability to manipulate mana within your own body.
* Grants mana veins if no mana veins are present in your body.
* Alchemical Wisdom
* Grants basic knowledge of alchemical products and the methods of crafting them.
* Alchemical Identifier
* Grants the ability to identify alchemical ingredients
* Combat Alchemist
* Grants increased potency to alchemical products when used in combat.
***
The onslaught of system messages is almost overwhelming. I stagger back for a second in shock at the wall of text, then shake my head and get to work on choosing which skills and abilities to take.
For skills, alchemist’s spark and alchemical rites seem like no-brainers to me, but the third choice is a toss-up between alchemist’s grace and stalker’s shroud.
“Is there an upper limit to the quality of items I can make?” I ask Hen.
He grunts, getting the last of the hide stretched into the frame, and dusts off his hands before replying. “There is, but it’ll be quite some time before you get there if you ever do.”
That decides me. I thank Hen and choose stalker’s shroud. At the very least it will give me something to work with in hostile situations. Now onto the abilities,
This choice is much more difficult. I can already rule out combat alchemist since I want to avoid conflict as much as I can in this world, and mana manipulation is a must if I want to use magic at all, which hell yes, I do, so I’m left choosing two from potion crafter, alchemical wisdom, and alchemical identifier. I take potion crafter since the quality of life it offers appears just a bit too good to pass on, and alchemical wisdom, because I can probably learn to identify ingredients over time, so this ability seems more economical.
Another slight burst of light subsumes me for a moment as I finalize the selection, and I let out a quiet but excited cheer, bouncing on my heels. A now shirtless Hen grin’s at my excitement, leaning against the house, his sweat-stained tunic draped loosely over one arm as sweat rolls down a toned, if slight, chest.
“I’m going to give these skills and whatnot a shot,” I say, doing my best to avoid staring at the man. I swear his already smiling mouth tilts up slightly more, and I feel pink tickling the tops of my cheeks as I hurry past him into the tiny house.
Inside I sigh and shake my head. What the fuck was that? Doing my best to push it out of my head, I move to the chest and retrieve a book on local flora, then sit down on the bench and try to figure out how to access this alchemist’s wisdom. It’s easier than I expected, a system screen appearing the moment I wanted to know about health potions.
The screen showed the whole process and told me which ingredients were needed. It did not, however, show me any information about the ingredients. Thankfully it only requires two types of plants, amenalis and popatry, both of which are unfamiliar to me, oil or rendered fat of some kind, and some water.
According to Hen’s notes, those two plants were common in the local area, and the other parts could be used for various other concoctions that I was excited to try making. Leaving the house again, I find Hen dressed in a fresh shirt, sleeves rolled as he washes the sweaty one.
“I’m going to go looking for some plants,” I tell him simply, wondering if he might try and stop me, for my own safety of course. It’s not been all that long since he found me on the brink of death, after all.
“Alright. Let me know if you need anything,” Hen replies, and I smile before heading off into the woods around the glade.
I pause at the border separating the forest from the clearing, memories of a rabid wolf flooding my mind. I feel Hen’s eyes on my back and let out a deep breath. I’ve got this. With as much confidence as I can muster, I stride forward into the forest.
The amenalis proves easy to find, its tall yellow flowers poking up between the leaf litter. The popatry is likewise simple to find, being a small crawler with purple flowers that like to climb the northern faces of the trees.
On the short trek back, I gather more ingredients for my soaps and hormones until the satchel Hen made for me is practically bulging with my bounty, and I return to the house. Hen isn’t around, but that's hardly anything new. He frequently disappears for an hour or two.
Unperturbed, I pull the cauldron from where I left it to dry earlier and set about preparing the plants as directed by the system’s instructions. Moving onto actually making the potion, I start by trying to use the alchemist spark skill but frown when all I manage is give myself a slight headache. I’ll just ask Hen about it later. I shrug and lite the fire the old-fashioned way.
The process starts by adding rendered fat and the specified flower bits into the cauldron and stirring it together. While doing that, infuse the whole solution with mana and slowly add water until the solids disappear and the potion turns a dark red. Thankfully, the system guide includes a section on what exactly mana infusion is and how to do it.
Basically, it consists of some basic meditation to visualize the flow of mana inside your system, then consciously guiding that mana from your body and into the potion. It sounds simple enough, but it took me roughly ten tries before I finally succeeded at it. A pale blue light flowed from my hand, down my stirring rod and into the solution, and instantly I started to see a difference.
The bits of flower, stem, and seed began to dissolve, the oily streaks of fat floating in the water began to blend into the liquid, and the whole solution took on a pastel pink hue. Slowly as I continue to stir and infuse the potion, it darkens until, nearly half an hour later, it becomes a rich, almost blood red, and I take the cauldron off the heat.
***
=System Log=
* You have crafted one [common] health potion.
* You receive [50] experience.
***
A slight breeze tickles the back of my neck, and I sigh contentedly. “Not bad for your first time,” Hen’s voice comes from behind me, and I jump, nearly burning myself on the still-hot range, saved only by his swift hand catching mine.
“Careful there,” He says, staring intently at my hand caught carefully between his. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m fine,” I say quickly, pulling my hand slowly from his grip. “Thank you.” I have to fight the flush that tries to steel itself into my face and quickly pour out the potion into a narrow vial. “Would you like to give it a try?” I ask sheepishly, holding it out to him.
Hen smiles again, the slight motion of his mouth wrinkling the space around his eyes. “I think you should save it for now, in case of an emergency. You never know what might happen.”
I consider pressing him for a moment, then realize he’s got a point. “Right,” I say, grabbing a cork from the shelf above and shoving it into the vial with a soft squeaking thump. I glance at the window to avoid looking at the man before me and I realize how long I’ve been working. The sky outside is a black blanket full of stars.
“Tea then?” I ask. “Can I at least make you some tea?”
“That sounds wonderful,” Hen says, still smiling. “I do love the way you make it.” He turns to climb up into his bunk with a book tucked under one arm from the chest, and I turn to busy myself at the range with a pot of water and some tea leaves. Once it's ready, he climbs back down, and I hand him his mug.
“Care to join me outside?” Hen asks. “It's a wonderful night.”
“That sounds lovely,” I say with a slight smile, forcing myself to keep a grin off my face.
Together we step outside into the chill, breezy night, sitting atop the steps to the house and staring up at the sky as we sip our tea and idly talk about anything and everything. I can’t help but think that this, here and now, is all I’ve ever wanted out of life. I’ve spent so much of my life hiding from the world, running away from everything and everyone, but now all I feel is a deep contentedness.
A sigh breaks from my lips, and before I know what I’m doing, I lean against Hen, my head dropping to his shoulder. An instant later, his hand is on mine, and it feels like it belongs there, like it's a perfect fit. I tilt my head to look up at him to find him looking down at me, emerald eyes glittering with starlight.
Around us, the wind picks up, whipping our hair wilding about, whistling in the distance, but neither of us pays it any mind as his head dips down, mine lifts and our lips touch, lighting coursing through my body at the sensation. I pull away for a second, eyes fluttering as fast as my heart, head full of clouds and pleasantly soft things, but a vein of unease I can’t place cuts through it all.
Hen frowns, and I quickly open my mouth to explain what I don’t fully understand. “I-” I start, then pause, looking for the right words, my heart in my ears, my hands wanting nothing more than to touch him, to feel Hen’s skin beneath mine. All I want at this moment is him, but there's something off that I just can’t explain. “Hen, I-”
BANG
The whole world rocks, and my heart races for an altogether different reason as something bursts through the top half of the house, showering us in splintered timbers. Hen leaps to cover me with his body as I curl up reflexively, knees to my chest, hands over my head.
What the fuck?
Debris crashes down all around us in a clattering cacophony as something fills the night with furious, mountainous birdlike squawking into the night. “HENDRICK” The voice screams with the force of a thousand tsunamis crashing against a shore.
The pair of us share a brief look, longing fear and anger passing between us in an instant, then Hen straightens as the rubble stops falling, and I look up at the dragon hovering in the sky above us.